


not as lonely (as you think you are)

by piningofficial (PoeticallyIrritating)



Series: Femslash February Ficlets 2016 [2]
Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 08:55:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6111453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoeticallyIrritating/pseuds/piningofficial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Maya breaks up with a football player, Riley is the big spoon, and Maya’s mom is a little psychic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	not as lonely (as you think you are)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Carly Rae Jepsen's "Sweetie."

When they’re in tenth grade, Maya dates a senior. He’s on the football team and Riley thinks he’s…dreamy, sure, but kind of a jerk. Which she tells Maya, a lot, and Maya rolls her eyes and says she’s _just having fun_ and Riley says that she doesn’t get how hanging out with someone who doesn’t care about your feelings is fun. It turns into a Thing, like, capital-T double-underline Thing. They don’t talk for a week.

On Friday at 7:48 pm, Maya breaks up with her boyfriend because he tried to grope her behind the girls’ bathroom during a football game. At 8:03, she leaves the game and goes home to cry into her pillow. At 8:27, she calls Riley.

At 8:27 on a Friday night, Riley is, predictably, at home. She’s painting her toenails lime green in the bathroom, with the window open to let the fumes out, and she answers the phone with one hand still holding the nail brush.

“I’m sorry,” Maya says. “You were right.”

“I’m sorry too,” Riley says. “I’m supposed to be there for you.” After a pause, in which Riley’s pretty sure she hears Maya sniffle, Riley asks, “Are you okay?”

“Not totally,” says Maya. “I came back early from the game, and my mom’s not home and I don’t know what I would even say to her anyway.” She sniffs again. “I don’t want her to be disappointed in me.”

“Do you want me to come over?” Riley asks.

There’s a long silence. Finally Maya says, “Would you?” It’s so soft Riley can hardly hear it.

“Fifteen minutes.”

It’s a little longer than fifteen minutes, because Riley still isn’t as sneaky as she’d like to think she is, and she gets ambushed by her parents. They shut up pretty quick when Riley says she’s going to see Maya, because they’ve been almost as heartbroken as Riley about this whole thing.

Well, okay, her dad does. Her mom asks five questions:

  1. How are you getting there?
  2. Is Maya all right?
  3. Do you have your pepper spray?
  4. Do you remember what we told you about taking the subway at night?
  5. Is Maya going to meet you at the other end?



The answers are:

  1. On the subway, Mom.
  2. I don’t know but she probably will be.
  3. Right here!
  4. _Yes,_
  5. I don’t think so but I’ll be careful!



She has to demonstrate possession of the pepper spray before her mom lets her out of the house, and then she has to wait in the station for like ten minutes before she gets a train going in the right direction. At 8:42 she runs up the stairs to street level to get phone service so she can text Maya that the trains are running slow but she’ll be there. It’s going to cost another $2.75 to swipe back in but her stomach is churning with the fear that Maya could think she’s being abandoned. Maya says _ok,_ followed by a green heart emoji. Riley personally thinks that green is a kind of impersonal color for a heart, but she appreciates the gesture. She texts a sparkly pink heart in response and hurries down the stairs again, just as the next train is squealing into the station.

The walk from the subway station to Maya’s house is always a little sketchy and she holds her keys in one hand and her pepper spray in the other. (Nobody’s on the street except for old Tillie sweeping the sidewalk outside her laundromat, but you can never be too careful.) She knocks their special knock on Maya’s front door, tap _tap-tap,_ tap _tap-tap,_ and after a minute, Maya opens up. She looks like she’s been crying. She lets Riley in, shuts the door, and goes wordlessly back to a nest of blankets on the couch. She’s staring at the TV, but there’s nothing on.

Riley gets two cups of water from the kitchen. She digs around until she finds their favorite Maya’s-house cups from when they were little: princesses for Riley, superheroes for Maya. She brings them to the couch and sits down beside Maya. Maya sips from the cup when it’s offered to her, shifting so she can drink without spilling.

“You hungry?” Riley asks.

Maya shakes her head.

“Have you eaten?”

She nods. “Hot dog. At the game.” She sticks out her tongue in an exaggerated expression of disgust.

It makes her feel overwhelmingly guilty, thinking that she stayed home from the game because she was mad at Maya. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m supposed to be there for you no matter what, and I wasn’t.”

Maya, having downed the water in her Batgirl cup in record time, sets it down on the carpet and leans over to rest her head in Riley’s lap, nuzzling her face into the crook of Riley’s knee. “You’re here now,” she says softly.

Riley strokes Maya’s hair with the hand not occupied by a faded Jasmine cup, and it’s only a few minutes until Maya is snoring softly. Riley puts on the TV, low, and Maya doesn’t wake up until her mom comes home from working the dinner shift.

“Mom—” Maya starts, but her mom shakes her head.

“You girls get to bed, now,” Maya’s mom whispers. “It’s ok. We’ll talk in the morning.”

Maya’s mom has always seemed somehow both oblivious and psychic, and Riley’s convinced that she already knows what happened.

She also gives Riley a funny, knowing kind of look as they go off to bed, and Riley tries to figure it out while she brushes her teeth. Maya’s eschewed hygiene in favor of collapsing into bed, and when Riley follows, there’s no place to sleep but curled around Maya; her hand clasps one of Maya’s and—just in the instant before she falls asleep—she feels like maybe she knows what that look was about.


End file.
